COUN 552 Introduction to Professional and Ethical Issues in Counseling

One of the best ways to search the Counseling literature is to use a database, like PsycINFO, Academic Search Complete or ProQuest Psychology.

• e.g. PsycINFO covers over 2000 different journals, spanning decades, but only includes content relevant to psychology and related areas. 

I often get asked, "Why should I search PsycINFO (or any other database) when I can just use the Google Scholar search engine?"  It really depends on what you are trying to do. Different research tools have different pros and cons.

For novice researchers, databases like PsycInfo provide advanced options to help quickly identify relevant sources. Since it's a curated collection, you'll get fewer irrelevant search results. In contrast, Google Scholar helps you search across the web, finding sources from Business, Anthropology, Computer Science, you name it! Sometimes that's great and sometimes it's not what you want because it can take more time to sift through so much content.

Here are some good databases for counseling literature.  Where possible, I've noted coverage of specific journal titles.  

For complete coverage of an individual journal title, use the Journal A-Z list from the Library Homepage.